When “Ellis Island: The Dream of America” was performed at Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Festival last year, Peter Boyer never dreamed that his popular multi-media work about America’s iconic port of entry for European immigrants would have any political resonance.

“I had never intended the piece to be any kind of political statement. It’s a historical work,” said Boyer, whose “Ellis Island” has been performed almost 200 times around the country since its 2002 premiere. “But I admit the themes of the piece seem to be all the more pressing right now. There has been so much interest lately in this work. It seems to me that part of the explanation for that is people are looking for a positive, optimistic statement (about immigration) right now.”

If you missed last season’s “Ellis Island” concerts, you’ll have a chance to experience it Friday, June 29, this time on the small screen. A performance of the work was recorded and will be broadcast on “Great Performances,” the popular PBS series. It will be the debut of the orchestra, composer and work on “Great Performances.”

Boyer has seen the broadcast tape, and he’s impressed.

“The finished show is so very well done, as one would imagine. It has never been produced so fully or with so many images. I wrote the piece more than 17 years ago, and yet when I watched the (PBS recording) I realized these stories still move me so much after all this time.”

Barry Bostwick performs with the Pacific Symphony in “Ellis Island: The Dream of America,” airing Friday, June 29, on PBS’ “Great Performances.” (Photo by Stan Sholik)

The Pacific Symphony’s performance of Peter Boyer’s “Ellis Island: The Dream of America,” filmed in April 2017, will air Friday, June 29 on PBS. (Photo by Stan Sholik)

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Composer Peter Boyer says he never intended for “Ellis Island: The Dream of America” to be a political work. (Photo courtesy of PBS)

Boyer, 48, a native of Providence, R.I., is a frequently commissioned mid-career composer whose works for the concert hall, film and television have been widely praised, and he often addresses overtly American themes, such as his musical portrait of the Kennedy brothers for the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2010. (Debuting not long after the death of Edward Kennedy, it was ecstatically received by the Boston audience.) But creating “Ellis Island” was a daunting challenge unlike anything else he has done, Boyer said.

“The piece took on a life of its own over the course of the year that I worked on it. Creating the script took about five months – almost as much time as it took to compose the music.”

Boyer tapped sources from the Ellis Island National Museum’s Ellis Island Oral History project, which since its formation in 1973 has worked to preserve the first-hand recollections of immigrants who passed through the Ellis Island immigration station between 1892 and 1954.

Boyer made two research trips to Ellis Island. “The biggest was just before Sept. 11, 2001. I took another trip after 9/11 and reflected then on how the New York skyline had changed, and how so much else had changed as well. At that point I was about one-third of the way through the music.” He received a sensitive question from the work’s commissioning organizations, the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. “They said, ‘Do you think the piece needs to change in some way? Do you think 9/11 needs to be reflected?’ I thought a lot about it and said, ‘No. I don’t think what has happened should change what the piece should be.’”

Boyer selected the words of seven people who came to America through Ellis Island between 1910 and 1940, creating a 45-minute work that interweaves projected photos; monologues taken from actual recordings of immigrants and performed live by actors; and musical interludes, a prologue and an epilogue played by an orchestra.

At first, Boyer wanted to tell 10 stories, allotting two minutes for each one. “But as I worked on it, I realized I couldn’t do justice to any of these stories in just two minutes. It’s not enough time.”

As Boyer delved into the interviews, he realized the details and tone of each one would dictate length and structure. “They had such narrative and cultural diversity. They had heartwarming moments, humorous moments, poignant moments.” Balance was his byword. “I always tried to find the proper balance; I didn’t want the music to ever step on the story.” Boyer kept the orchestration light and transparent during the spoken-word sections.

The “Great Performances” broadcast is a dream come true for Boyer. He has been a fan of the series since he was a college student. “I had tried quite hard a few years ago to get ‘Great Performances’ to consider (recording) ‘Ellis Island,’ but I couldn’t make it happen by myself; I had no institutional connection.”

Boyer is impressed with what 10 cameras and an Emmy-winning producer and director can bring to his work. But he’s even more pleased that “Ellis Island” still connects with people in such a personal way that it humbles and impresses him.

“People still look at these stories and are amazed at the genuine human quality that they share. We’re living at a time when only a small number of people who were Ellis Island immigrants are still among us. It will become something that recedes into history, but the stories are quite universal.”

‘Great Performances: Ellis Island: The Dream of America’

When: 10 p.m. Friday, June 29

Channel: PBS SoCal

“Great Performances – Ellis Island: The Dream of America” with Pacific Symphony airs Friday, June 29 at 10 p.m. on PBS in honor of Immigrant Heritage Month. It will be available to stream the following day via pbs.org/gperf and PBS apps.

Paul D. Hodgins is a freelancer who previously worked at the Orange County Register since 1993. He spent more than two decades as the Register’s theater critic, and for eight years he wrote about dance as well. Hodgins has also written for American Theatre, Variety, The Sondheim Review and Backstage West. Hodgins has also been active as an educator and scholar. He was the music director of the dance department at The University of California, Irvine from 1985-92 and served in similar positions at Eastern Michigan University, Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University and the Banff Centre for the Arts. His book about relationships between music and choreography, 'Music, Movement and Metaphor,' was published in 1992. Since 2001, Hodgins has taught arts and entertainment journalism at California State University, Fullerton. Hodgins holds a doctorate in musical composition and theory from the University of Southern California. He lives in Huntington Beach.

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